He stood on a dreary Monday in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, staring down at the ground that may have once been green, but was now only a mound of dirt and a few pieces of uprooted grass barely clinging to life. The weather seemed to consciously parallel his emotions; the clouds hung heavily over his head and not even a sliver of sunlight was able to penetrate the darkness. Even so, he was not focused on the clouds, nor the humidity that wrapped tightly around his chest, or even the absence of any movement or sound anywhere within earshot that only seemed to add to the knot in his stomach, which unsteadily continued to grow every time he felt any unrest. However, in the midst of all of this, his thoughts, awareness, and gaze were centered on one object.
The headstone.
He stared down upon the beautiful name of the one he loved. She was adored by everyone -parents, friends, teachers- that was her normal. She had a smile that could have charmed the devil himself, a warm heart full of compassion and grace, and a mind containing the most brilliant of imaginations, but no one had known about his love for her. No one knew him at all. He was from New York, where she had visited, and met him. Even he recognized it as her biggest mistake. She had died two weeks earlier than the day he stood at her grave, and even when the autopsy found the cause of death but no companion with the body, he knew. He remembered. It was his fault.
He had nothing left in him to hold back the memories, so they replayed over and over every time he shut his eyes.
That was why he couldn't sleep.
He had barely slept at all in exactly two weeks, because she was gone, and it was his fault. Tears blurred his vision as, even without the darkness and concealment of his closed eyes, he watched what he had done once more. It was his fault.

They sped down the highway in the old, broken down truck she had borrowed from her father to drive to New York City, with intentions of visiting her elderly grandmother for a month that summer. After she had met him, she decided to stay longer, and even though they only knew each other a little while, he had no doubt she was the one he wanted to spend his life with. So, they were taking turns driving back to her hometown to meet her parents. It was his turn to drive, and she was singing at the top of her lungs as he laughed at her. She just laughed along and continued singing, because even with her wide range of talents, she could not carry a tune for a million dollars, and she knew it. In his laughter, he looked over at her. From that specific point of their eye contact, every second seemed to be a million years. He watched her look back to the road, and the smile disappear from her face. He watched her eyes widen, and her mouth open in a scream. He looked back through the windshield and froze. He had wandered into the lane of oncoming traffic. He swerved in hopes of missing the car speeding toward them and landing in the ditch next to the road, but it was too late. The car hit the truck's passenger side with unbelievable force, and both vehicles were thrown from the main road. That was when everything sped up. He got out of the car and ran to try and rescue her. Her door was crushing her, and there was nothing he could do. He just pulled the handle with all of his might and listened to her gasping for air as he yelled that he was coming, that everything was going to be okay, until his voice was gone, and so was she. When he could no longer hear the sputtering gasps of minimal reassurance that she would live, he ran. He couldn’t face it. He ran and ran and ran so he wouldn’t have to deal with police officers, ambulances, parents, and worst of all, the heavy black bag that would conceal her body and take her away forever.

So he stood above her grave as the tears fell from his eyes. He left a rose on her headstone and walked away, head down, into the fog. He looked back and could no longer see the place where her body lay through the thick mist. He cringed. It was his fault.